Henry Gordon Smith is a global AgTech leader, speaker and founder of Agritecture, a global leader in urban agriculture consulting services. Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he and Henry discuss the business model of vertical farming and urban agriculture. They expound on the racial and socioeconomic divide within agriculture as well as the ongoing ‘food apartheid.’ Finally, Henry speaks to upcoming events and projects he and his organization are working towards.

Special thanks to our Season 1 Sponsor

IGS – https://intelligentgrowthsolutions.com/

Key Takeaways

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• 00:01 – Henry shares his origin story and how he originally became interested in vertical farming and podcasting
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• 07:52 – The biggest challenges Henry has faced as an entrepreneur and how investments have shaped the vertical farming business model
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• 13:04 – Complex questions about vertical farming that Henry is seeking answers to
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• 20:23 – Henry shares his definition of vertical farming and solutions he suggests for the industry
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• 29:13 – Henry’s speaks to the mission of his company Agritecture, and some of its offerings
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• 36:15 – Henry’s unique perspective on race, the ‘food apartheid’ and urban agriculture
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• 42:49 – Upcoming vents Henry is launching with Agritecture
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• 45:29 – Henry expounds on what excites him about the future of vertical farming and AgTech in general
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• 50:25 – Where listeners can follow Henry
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Tweetables

“As I was exploring my interest in doing business solutions to sustainability challenges, I created three blogs to kind of test the market and to see what people responded to.” (03:38)

“I’m not about hype. I’m happy to encourage and talk about the benefits of urban agriculture and vertical farming, but I really want to talk about the complex questions.” (12:49)

“My definition is really about three dimensional farming. It could be one floor, it could be a container, it could be a basement. It’s really about saying, ‘Ok, when we think three dimensionally about agriculture and the potential to photosynthesize plants using LEDs, what could we do and what could we do with this space?’” (22:25)

“We have the third urban agriculture director in the United States that was just put into place in [Washington] D.C., to join Atlanta and Philadelphia. That’s really exciting…I’m really excited to see how policy accelerates the industry and starts to structure it a little bit.” (48:00)

Links Mentioned:

Henry’s LinkedIn

Agritecture

Agritecture Designer

Agritecture Event Link

Henry’s Instagram – @theagritect

Henry’s Twitter – @TheAgritect

Books Mentioned:

The Vertical The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century - Dr. Dickson Despommier

Intelligent Growth Solutions

Website | Twitter | YouTube

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in society, there's a lot of pressure to grow at astronomical speeds, and I had

to make a decision early on about what kind of entrepreneur I wanted to be

and what kind of business I wanted to build. Welcome to the Vertical Farming

Podcast, weekly conversations with fascinating CEOs,

founders, and agtech visionaries. Join us every week

as we dive deep into the world of vertical farming with your

host, Harry Duran. So, Henry Gordon-Smith

of Agritecture, thank you for joining us on the Vertical Farming Podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. So, what's fun here is that we're both

fellow podcasters, so maybe we'll start there. When

did the podcasting Yeah, I kept getting questions from

our blog audience, when are you starting a podcast? And then we

went internally about 6 months ago and started brainstorming what we could do to

contribute, and we decided to pick a format which is really focused on

specific cities. We wanted to kind of complement the other podcasts out there,

and we wanted to showcase how agriculture thinks about local food and urban

agriculture, specifically, you know, what data is going to make it work or not, right?

What's the climate? What's the demand? what are the challenges that various

urban farmers are facing in cities. So our podcast, Locally Grown In, we do one

episode a month, so, you know, not crazy active. We try to do

really cool interviews and we focus on a city at a time. So it's Locally

Grown In Dubai, Locally Grown In Miami, and we're really

excited to kind of spread and do every city in the world. Yeah, I've been

trying to get caught up. I'm up to New York City now, which is near

and dear to me because I grew up in New York. I grew up in

Yonkers, just outside, and I'm And then I've lived in LA and

I'm currently in Minneapolis. So I've basically got all

parts of the country covered. So we'll dive a little bit deeper in the podcast,

but maybe for the benefits of folks, I don't know that there's many who haven't

heard of you, but can you tell folks a little bit of your background and

how you ended up in agtech? Sure. So I grew up

around the world. I had the privilege of being born in Hong Kong and growing

up in Tokyo, Germany, the Czech Republic, and I graduated high school in Russia.

I'm a very global citizen from birth, and, you

know, that really kind of created this really exciting interest in big cities

and what big cities could do. I always wanted to be an architect, and so

I started exploring a little bit about how cities could respond to climate change in

my undergraduate degree. And in that process, I found there was a really big gap

around the knowledge of urban agriculture. People were thinking— this was back

2010, 2011— people were thinking about urban agriculture just as community

gardens and maybe rooftop farms. But there's so many ways to do this, and I

was really excited about the diversity of them, and I really wanted to share, you

know, the variety so that people involved in it— meaning entrepreneurs

that want to build them, or policymakers that want to encourage it, or architects that

want to design it— are really armed with, you know, the full

spectrum of what's possible. Because, you know, I don't want to repeat the same mistakes

of the past where we just kind of create monoculture and we say

there's one way to do this. There's actually so many different ways to do this

in agriculture, and really our mission at agriculture is to

educate and inform and accelerate low-carbon solutions to

localization of food. So the blog was really about that, and then essentially my

audience started requesting consulting services from me, and I started getting referrals

from people that were saying, oh, somebody has a question, you know, can you answer

it? And no one was providing a consulting service that was independent of selling

equipment. So I said, well, there's an interesting opportunity here. You know, people need

to get technology-agnostic advising. The decision as to do greenhouse

or vertical is a very important first decision, or soil is a very important

first decision. How can you do that if you're not open to all of the

technologies available? So we created a methodology for that, and we've been

really accelerating really, really cool urban farms around the world.

And to date, we've consulted on over 110 projects in 26 countries.

So we've really fomented our place as the leading urban agriculture consulting firm, and

it's been very, very exciting. And I'm proud of my team for being able to

respond to this niche and this very important issue. When did this

become a passion of yours? Because you said you started

the blog, but like, can you talk a little bit about just— and you talked

about AgriTechture's mission. When did this become your mission? Yeah, you

know, as I was exploring my interest in doing business

solutions to sustainability challenges, I created 3 blogs

to kind of test the market and to see what people responded to and also

what I cared about. As an entrepreneur, it's very important you are passionate about what

you do because You're working crazy hours. You have to inspire your team.

You have to inspire your investors. You have to inspire your customers. So, you know,

I had to find something that really fit with me. So I did one that

was called Technology Water, another one that was called Urban Layering, which was about new

density solutions for urban development, and then agriculture.

And agriculture just had an overwhelmingly positive response, and the traffic

grew, and the actual activity that people were doing related to the content

was really good. People were finding jobs through the blog and things like that. So

I kind of dropped the other 2 and focused on it. And I think the

passion really came from how urban agriculture embodies my passion

for cities, my interest in solving sustainability challenges, but also I'm a

wannabe architect. So by creating architecture, I get to do

architectural-type work without being an architect. And if you talk to

architects, most of them will say, don't be an architect, the hours are crazy, the

pay is low. So I kind of responded to a lot of that feedback and

went this route. I mean, honestly, before this, I thought I was going to be

a diplomat. I was very interested in policy and I was doing some policy work

related to climate change and migration, but it was just too slow. It wasn't enough

action. So I kind of came to the conclusion that basically

through these requests that, you know, yeah, I think I would be a really good

consultant because I love to help solve people's specific problems. I love

project-based work. I want a global practice. And

so that really fit well with that passion. And, and I just get so excited

when I see our clients take their ideas to reality. I get so excited when

I get to visit farms and report on the great work they're doing. I get

really excited to do podcasts like this and share ideas. So, you know, 10 years

in, I'm still as passionate as ever for this topic. I mean, I really, really

believe that urban agriculture isn't just about growing some food in the city and

creating some jobs. I think it's really about unlocking sustainable urban

development. You know, anyone listening can ask themselves this question:

what is an emerging technology that embraces the food, water, energy,

and waste nexus better than urban agriculture? Solar panels hit one part of it,

biodigesters hit another part of it, you know, biking and rainwater

catchment hit another part of it, but urban agriculture brings that all together.

And so imagine a future where we have people in cities asking

those questions and developing businesses around that. They're going to unlock a

lot of other things we need to figure out to develop our cities sustainably to

be resilient to climate change. And that's the bottom line for me. That's why I'm

so passionate about this topic. Do you have a consulting background when you started

this? No, I didn't. I mean, I did. I had a blogging

background, right? So I was a blogger. I was recruited to be a blogger for

my university, and then I won a competition with Royal

Bank of Canada to be a video blogger for them for a while. And then

I started doing some freelance consulting for people who were self-publishing books and needed

to do that. And I was an executive assistant to an entrepreneur that was building

a sustainability brand, and I was doing their media strategy. So I started

learning how to market my brand and sell

myself individually and doing freelance work. And that was really the the baseline for

the consulting. But my mom is a talented consultant in the areas of HR,

diversity, and emotional intelligence. So I got a little bit of

advice from her too. It sounds like those skill

sets would come in handy as you start having these sessions with your clients,

especially that emotional intelligence and people getting excited about what they're trying to do and

you helping manage expectations about what's actually possible. That's exactly my

job. So a lot of, you know, I've got a really great team including horticulturalists,

agronomists, agriculture engineers, sustainability managers, you know,

really across the spectrum to provide interdisciplinary services to our clients. But a

lot of what I do is the business development and, hey, tell me your idea.

I'll tell you in a few minutes what you should change about that idea

and how you can make it more realistic. And yeah, you absolutely want to be

sensitive to that because there's really amazing people coming into the space from

software, technology, finance backgrounds, and they have a lot of

areas of skills that I don't have. So I have to really match their

abilities with our abilities. and make sure that we're getting to a better result. So,

you know, I do a lot of that part of it. And I think also,

you know, you need emotional intelligence in any leadership position, you know, with my

team and with my clients throughout that process. So, thanks, Mom.

As an entrepreneur, I'm just curious, what's been the biggest challenge with

growing the company? Well, you know, I think the

biggest challenge is growth itself. You know, we have a model in society

in the Elon Musk era and you know, all of these things with crazy

rapid growth, the Theranos stuff. And so there's a lot of pressure to grow

at astronomical speeds. And I had to make a decision early on about what kind

of entrepreneur I wanted to be and what kind of business I wanted to build.

Do I want to build, you know, an enormous global IPO-style

business? Do I want to build a business that's just about me that maybe has,

you know, a lot more flexibility? Or do I want something in between where I

have a really strong company culture, a global brand, and we can

be profitable. And that's really what I selected. So I selected to

develop a really tight and dynamic firm with a really strong

culture. Probably my favorite part of my job is, in addition to working with our

clients on their ideas, is creating that company culture and maintaining it.

So I think I took a really deep look into myself about what kind of

business I wanted to run and what was going to make me happy on a

daily basis. And part of that is just doing work to try and change and

improve the world. But I think also the day-to-day of working with a global

and smallish team is what I really like. So the greatest challenge I would

say is how do we take the responsibility

to our employees, the business, and our investors towards

growth and balance that with our values and our culture? And I

think it's really a constant discussion that I have with my fellow directors at the

company. And thankfully, we have early investors that are really

passionate about the topic with us and have that long-term vision. So I've had to

make some really good choices about team, really important choices about investors,

And I think, you know, that's always the challenge. Every year we have higher growth

numbers than the last year, and that's how a business should be run. And I

believe that a business can't be sustainable without being profitable, so you have

to have a growth model in there. So I think that's probably the greatest challenge,

but we're handling it, but it's a challenge. You mentioned the investing, and

obviously the amount of money that's coming in has been really interesting, and it's probably

changed dramatically since when you got started as well. When you look at what's happening

with, like, money coming into Plenty and the AeroFarms and the Bowerys of

the world, do you see that also? Do you see, like, an uptick Oh,

definitely. There's been uptake. I mean, when I started the blog, there were no

commercial vertical farms in North America that were advertised and marketed that way.

There was no major VC money coming into the space. So I've seen dramatic

changes, I would say, in the past 5 years. Honestly, the first 5 years of

me exploring this and blogging about it was like a nerdy kid in his

dorm room and, you know, whatever, 1,000 visitors a month kind

of thing, you know. And, and, and so, but as that interest grew,

And as people read Dickson's book, Dickson Despommiers, author of The

Vertical Farm, and started saying, oh, I'm going to build a farm too, and people

started making mistakes, and people started learning from those mistakes, and overall,

the understanding of vertical farming, for example, has been more democratized, in part by

our blog, but also by other players, and even those that have not succeeded.

So people kind of know the basics now more than before, and so that

elevates the whole discussion, and that elevates the kind of investment, and and the proof

of concepts that exist there. So, you know, AgFunder has some really good reports

on the growth in this space. But yeah, we're seeing, you know, over

100% every year increase in the amount of investment in the space. I mean, I

think it was 340% year over year, 2017 to

2018, you know, and a lot of the size of those are getting bigger into

the $100 million, you know, levels. So what do I think about that? I mean,

I think it's obviously very exciting. It's great that there is money going

into the space, because as a new technology, you know, we need to get the

cost down, and we need people who are pioneers and experimenting with that.

And that's what a lot of these, these companies are doing, is they're developing new

data solutions, automation solutions, getting consumers excited about this

product and aware of this product, getting policymakers. So it's all kind of a

really great thing to solve, solve, solve the greater challenge at hand that I

think we're all aware of. But part of my concern is some of this

investment is VC folk, VC, VC type investment. And so with my

detailed understanding of how these operations work, I

get concerned about that in some ways because the rapid growth that's expected of

them, you know, those kinds of funds, is really not really in

alignment with the vertical farming model, which is about raise a

good chunk of money, like let's say at least $500,000, build a pilot,

prove that you can make that work, raise more money, grow from there. But you've

got to do a lot of things. You've got to get consumers excited about the

product. You've got to advance technology. You've got to manage labor. You've got to manage

distribution. You've got to build an amazing brand that's going to be the winning one.

All of that takes a lot of time. It's not, it's not an app. It's,

it's not a software company, you know. So you have to do all of that

plus have investors that are like, get that this is so new and

so pioneering that they're going to be patient because it's inevitable that you're going to

make mistakes. It's inevitable that your build deadlines are going to be late. It's inevitable

that you're going to have costs that were higher than you expected. So it's

really interesting to see You know, what kind of investment's coming in, but I also

want to be careful because I think some of that investment pushes the hype story

around vertical farming, and I'm not about hype. I'm happy to

encourage and talk about the benefits of urban agriculture and vertical farming,

but I really want to talk about the complex questions, you know, and I think

that some of this investment drives more hype, and that's not

necessarily a good thing. What are some of those more complex questions

that you're looking to get answered? Yeah, I think some of the complex questions are,

can vertical farming meaningfully impact food security, right? When we talk

about feeding people, what is the difference between feeding people and producing

salad greens? I have nothing against vertical farming, obviously,

but I do want to talk about, again, going back to these models and the

complexity we're trying to communicate, that there are many tools in the toolbox to

solve problem X, aka food security. Vertical

farming is one of them. Is it the best one? Maybe, in some

climates. For example, if you look at northern climates, in the northern part of Canada,

they have a lot of obesity issues. They have a lot of issues with vitamin

deficiencies because they import all of the food. Vertical farms could

provide a really interesting nutritional solution to that that could

actually make economic sense. So that's great. That's a specific

solution. But in the end, people need calories.

People need a diverse set of nutrients, and vertical farming today

doesn't provide that. a specific solution to a specific

problem in some places. I think another complex question is,

are vertical farms really green? I mean, are they really good for the environment?

You've got a lot of equipment. I studied sustainability management at Columbia, and one

of the things we looked at a lot was embodied energy. What is the carbon

footprint of all of that equipment? And I think that, you know, vertical farming—

one of the complex and difficult discussions is vertical farming gets away with being

seen as green because it saves a ton of water, saves a ton of space,

uses no pesticides. You've got this list of all these benefits that kind of makes

the embodied energy of the construction and also the carbon

footprint from the lights if the energy is sourced from, you know, a

carbon-intensive energy source. So in America, most of our energy, or a

lot of energy today depending on where you are, comes from coal. So if you're

taking coal and powering a farm that's growing salads, are you really

green? And I think life cycle analysis is lacking in this space

to really look at that. There's a lot of problems with traditional agriculture growing lettuce,

right? So I think there are cases where vertical farming

can be more carbon competitive from a sustainability

assessment, but I think that that needs to be defined pretty specifically. And

so that's, that's another one of the complex questions. Another one is around equity.

When you build farms that are very capital intensive, like vertical farms are, so

if this is urban agriculture, this is low tech, low investment, this is high tech,

high investment. Vertical farming is here, right? And automated

vertical farms are here, right? So the robot farms in the future. future. Will

there be a future where those farms are actually solving not food security, but

I'd say food access issues? For example, Atlanta has

25% of its population lives in food deserts. Will vertical farms solve that

problem if they're so expensive? I hope so, but let's have a

complex discussion about what they're doing to do that today and when and where

they could do that in the future. So those are some for you all to

think about. Yeah, it's helpful because I think a lot of people, when they

first introduced to the concept and the idea of it, it's really glamorous and it

is very futuristic, but it is really like a a lot of the phase— what

we call the phase 1. I interviewed Steven Pankhurst who did a really interesting

session, 3-part series on YouTube that talked about the viability of

these different— starting out with leafy greens. And then, I know you talked to the

Agricool folks doing strawberries now in Dubai. So, it's

interesting. So, it seems like there is a push. And I think there was just—

I just posted something today on Twitter about the bunched

tomatoes now as well, which is interesting. So, there's some interesting—

it's almost like adopting the crop to benefit the most from

something like a vertical farm environment? Well, you're absolutely right there. I'm not

saying— I think all of these solutions, these

challenges or critiques can be solved. And I think, again, it's about— I

don't know, I'm very proud of our methodology and how we approach that question at

the beginning. Like, what is the right— what is your problem that you're trying to

solve? And what is the right solution to match that problem? And I think, you

know, a lot of the companies in the space obviously have an incentive to say

their way is the best. Every time. And I think, I think

that's not where I'm at. You know, I prefer to take a step back. And

I think another part of what you mentioned that's really interesting is, is yes, right

now most of the— almost all of the seeds used in

vertical farms are seeds intended for field growing.

So, for example, I was meeting with Rijkswaterstaat recently. They're one of the biggest seed

companies, and they are breeding for indoor farming and want to be the

leader in this indoor farming kind of seed question. I think the

other piece is genetic engineering, which has huge, huge potentials to impact

vertical farming. Like you said, growing more dense tomatoes. I was at the University of

Guelph recently, and they've been able to breed a plum tree

that basically fruits like a tomato. So imagine kind of like that tomato you

saw in that picture, the article you're talking about. Imagine that, but with plums,

and it's constantly fruiting year-round. So they

showed it to me, and it kind of grows flat like a vine as opposed

to like a tree. So, it could work in controlled environments. They're

doing it for space because apparently there's something about

plums and bone density that they need for the astronauts. So, there's a huge

future for that, but again, that's a bit of a conflict with some of the

consumer ideas around GMOs. Does Europe want a bunch of

genetically engineered vertical farms growing food because it's more dense and more

efficient? Will they accept that? Will the Middle East accept that?

Maybe. Europe, probably not. The US, Maybe some places, maybe not.

So, you know, vertical farming has this thing where it's, you know, it needs to

be about integrating agriculture, not vertical farming, in

my opinion, because vertical farming is just one, one approach. I think when you take

a step back, you can be more open about, you know, solving that problem. Yeah,

it's funny because even this idea about GMOs, I was talking to

Louisa Burwood-Taylor from AgFunder about this, and just even the definition

and the education for the public about— there's different

types of genetically— even the word genetically modified could mean if you're

genetically modifying something so that it grows in a more

fruitful fashion for the environment, as opposed to like changing the inherent

nature of that, you know, which is the one that people have a problem with.

And I think that's going to be part of the challenge as well, because I

think there are going to be some benefits to, you know, quote unquote,

genetically modifying a crop so that it grows better in these

types of environments. Yeah, and I think genetic

modification, like you said, there's different kinds, and breeding versus different versus genetic

modification, and then there's also cellular biology and

that approach, which is kind of a next-level thing. Breeding

has been happening forever, pretty much, so consumers don't seem

to have a problem with that, and genetic modification is kind of just the next

step for that. There's levels of genetic modification, like are you taking animal

DNA and putting it into a plant, or are you just taking other plant

DNA. So, it's complicated in that way. And, I think a lot of consumers

or a lot of people even that are in agriculture approach me and they say,

you know what, vertical farming, it's just not natural, hydroponics is just not

natural. And, I like to say to them, I said, well, can you tell me

when was agriculture natural? It's always been

engineered unless we're going to just go around and gather. The minute we

started organizing rows of farms or started analyzing soil,

we said that engineering plays a role in agriculture. Yeah. So, to

draw a line in the sand and say, this is the end of man

using technology for agriculture, you know, there's no way we're going to feed

9 billion people with that. And so, we have some real

problems that we may need to make some compromises for. So, let's talk a

little bit about the actual definition, because we were chatting a bit in the pre-chat

about, you know, what is a vertical farm? So, and I know that

some of your colleagues, you have a friendly disagreement on what

that is, but when people come to you, right, what are you thinking of, and

what are the solutions you're presenting when comes to vertical farms? Because I know that

can cover things like container farms as well. Yeah, so, you know, this

discussion point really comes from a mentor of mine, Dr. Dickson Nopamee, author of The

Vertical Farm, who I'm sure will be on this podcast. And he's amazing, and I

respect him and adore him. And we, we worked together, and we, we

designed a vertical farm together. And I remember one of the conflicts we had was

I picked a site in the Bronx, and I was really curious

about the kind of urban planning part of it. So I wanted to find There's

no zoning for vertical farming or even agriculture in most cities. So I said, well,

what kind of zoning does a vertical farm fit into? And I settled on the

light manufacturing zoning based on its definition would be the easiest one to fit into.

So then I found 10 sites and I narrowed that down to one site that

I was going to choose for my canvas. And I worked with Dickson to design

for that. And, you know, Dickson Despommiers' book is about literally

skyscraper farms. I mean, these are skyscraper, you know,

beautiful ecosystems, really, you know, amazing futuristic stuff that

I'm a big fan of. But, you know, in reality, there are

constraints that happen. For example, your floor-to-area ratios that are

required for different building sites. So, you know, how far are you from the

curb after your first floor? How in-depth does your building need to be?

And that changes the actual area of your building. And that's how places

like New York and major cities plan their buildings. So the point I'm trying to

make was Dixon was like, make it taller, make it bigger. And I was like,

well, literally the site doesn't allow for that. And then that

kind of evolved into when my design was finished and fit my attempt to

fit code and zoning requirements. We then had this

discussion about what vertical farming is. And so he defines it as

basically farming that's stacked and is 2 floors or higher.

So moving towards the verticality of the structure is very important in

Dixon's definition. My definition is really about

3-dimensional farming, that it could be 1 floor. It could be a container, it

could be a basement. It's really about saying, okay, when we think

3-dimensionally about agriculture and the potential to photosynthesize

plants using LEDs, you know, what can we do and what could we do

with this space? And again, I think it's more of a planning architecture perspective because

there's plenty of lazy spaces in cities. There's different kind of areas you could fit

it into. Typically those farms are hydroponic, but they don't have to be. Typically

those farms are LED lit, but you could imagine You know, greenhouse structures that have

vertical use of space, I think that embraces vertical farming.

With that said, I didn't coin the term vertical farm. You know, Dickson was the

first public person to really go big on that. There were some vertical farms that

existed before, you know, Dickson wrote about that, so he gets

to define it really. But, but if you're asking me, I think it's about, again,

taking a step back, thinking 3-dimensionally, and how you can use existing technologies

to, to do 3D farming. Yeah, when you were

on the Atlanta episode, you were stressing the importance of keeping the farms

close to the energy source, which I thought was interesting as well. I love that

you're a mega fan of Locally Grown In. You've listened to multiple episodes. So Atlanta

was really cool. Yeah, so, you know, again, going to the

carbon footprint question, there are parts of the world that,

because of energy efficiency advancements in lighting and

various systems, they actually have excess energy on the grid. And they

sell that energy to other people, other states, other countries in some

cases, at a lower cost. And as energy moves across these

transmission lines, those transmission lines emit energy and they actually

lose that energy. So if, if you're Alabama and I'm

Georgia and I'm going to send you excess energy, I may lose 30% of the

energy along that way. That is a sustainability issue. So if we can

keep all 100% in Atlanta, in Georgia, and turn that

into edible product for consumers, that's basically taking free

energy on the grid and turning it into a product that

benefits the community. And I think that's very circular economy thinking.

And, and I think that that's a really exciting play for this, is what are

the regions where we can get free energy? I mean, another one is in New

York State and Pennsylvania. There are thousands— I think 3,000

was the estimate Cornell gave— where there's small natural

gas wells that are too small to make money off of, meaning to

build piping to send it to a refinery, but they also kind of create some

geological issues, so they burn it. So they're just burning gas at these

3,000 locations. What if we just put greenhouses on all of those locations?

Well, Cornell estimates— a researcher at Cornell estimates that we can grow all of the

Northeast's leafy greens with those greenhouses, and

30 to 40% of the energy for those greenhouses would be free. That's where I

get excited. And that's, and that's again why, for anyone listening, you have to take

a step back from vertical farming because that's— those are the opportunities where you get

the biggest wins. You know, nobody wants to fit a square within a triangle,

right? You remember that game when we were a kid with the little cubes? That's

what you're doing when you say vertical farming is the solution. I'm going to fit

it here and there. You take a step back and use design thinking. You mentioned

the circular energy because you talked about that on the Brussels episode, and that, that

seems to be the location where they're more

focused

Yeah, it's not

just energy, it's also water and waste. So what we're talking about is a circular

economy, is that, you know, cities and spaces have resource flows, they have inputs and

outputs. You as an individual have inputs and outputs. So, you know, how

can we make sure that the source of inputs for buildings and the outputs from

them, wastewater, etc., can be used for something else

instead of, you know, in New York, We produce trash and then we send it

to Ohio. How can we take some of that trash and make it something useful?

That's kind of circular economy thinking. And I think what Belgium and Brussels

shows is the power of culture

around what is sustainable and the role of leaders and

policies to drive that culture. So the EU has made circular economy a big

part of their initiatives. Europeans have a long history of being

particularly efficient with space. and particularly thoughtful about

the earth in ways that maybe North America hasn't because of the abundant

resources it had when it was colonized. So that culture can

drive the behavior of entrepreneurs. And what we see in Brussels is that

there was not one farm I visited that was like, yeah, we

just produce greens and then sell them. You know, it was like we— vertical

farms were capturing rainwater in Brussels, which I've never seen in the

United States. They were partnerships with mushroom farms nearby

to share. There was, you know, fish farms that are growing

indoor fish and then selling their waste to greenhouses in decoupled

aquaponic systems. And I was like, wow, within a week I've seen 10

examples, 20 examples of different farms, all with

different incentives. Like, some of them want to go big VC, some of them want

to be community-focused, some of them are restaurant-focused, and all of them

considered it. And that's because Brussels, the EU, and

Belgium have created even small, like you'll get $1,500

a year if you can prove you're doing something with circular economy, you know, or

you'll be on a list of circular economy initiatives and entrepreneurs

do it based on that. So I think it's cultural. I think it's leadership and

policy focus, but very cool and something I'd like to see more of here. Yeah,

I saw that Plenty in one of the blog posts was doing a bit of

research into figuring out like a fully compostable clamshell, right? Because that's one

of the like, like the hidden secrets of like all these greens is like all

this plastic we're generating. Have you heard of any companies that are making some inroads

there? Honestly, it's a really difficult challenge. I mean, they're all looking

at it. You know, you've got energy to also create those new packaging

products, and those methods can also have negative consequences. You know,

you have to gather the waste, you have to process the waste, you have to,

you know, maybe sometimes add some chemicals to it, you know. And then when

it's compostable, do consumers compost it properly? Do they understand

where to compost it? What's the speed at which it degrades relative to other food

products and compostable products? Right now, there is not a clear solution for

that problem, and it's a big problem. So whoever solves that one will be very

rich. Yeah, it sounds as alluding to our earlier topic of

VC money. I think if there's a company that's in that space with all these

folks, I think they'll get a lot of people's attention. Well, I mean, I like

Ecovative. They're a company in Brooklyn that does— they do mushroom

containers and packaging, but the costs are pretty extreme. When you think about

salad mix and those products kind of need to breathe in a different

way, and so the packaging is actually pretty refined. There's actually a lot of perforations

in the packaging to allow it to breathe. Nobody— when you go to the

store and you see a salad mix and it's so humid in the product you

can't see the product, that's a problem. And so a lot of these

companies, they obviously want to focus on making sure the consumer

likes the product and wants to buy it. Packaging is a huge part of that,

and the fact is that we want everything pretty, we want everything

convenient and clean, and those things tend to require

toxic chemicals. Can you talk a little bit about your process? I think in

one of your podcast interviews, you mentioned how you've collected so much data at

AgriTechture that you're now actually— I don't know if open sourcing is the right term,

but you're providing a lot of that data for people to use. And I think

if they've got ideas about a type of farm they want to grow and a

location, they can actually do a little bit of the the research using

some of the heavy lifting you guys have already done. Can you talk a little

bit about that? Yeah, so, you know, AGRITECTURE's mission is to

accelerate urban agriculture globally as a response to climate change for

adaptation. We want to empower anyone anywhere to get involved in

that. So we began that through the blog, Chapter One, where we

share free knowledge, and we continue that. So we have, you know, my talks, these

podcasts. I'm really trying to add value for free to anyone who's interested in

this space so that you can make a difference. So that's something we do, that's

something we continue. Chapter 2 is for those people that are really serious about building

farms and really want to build some of the best brands and the best

technologies and the best solutions. We've compiled an expert team to advise

on that for a consulting fee. But obviously, having done this for a minute now,

I've learned that there's a lot of people out there that are too early for

consulting, or they are just curious, but

genuinely curious. Maybe they're just earlier on their journey. Maybe they're in a region where

they can't afford a New York City consultant, and that's fine. That doesn't mean we

don't want to solve their problems. So what we've done is we've taken

our approach, which has really started from when I started the blog, which was as

I reported on companies, I built an archive about my observations.

You know, what was the amount of money they raised? What's their typical yield? How

many workers did they have? You know, nothing proprietary, but things that

really help me understand how they relate to each other. Again, going back to that

methodology. That archive then has been really refined and developed with

the horticulturalists I work with on my team and engineers and the economists.

So we have a really exciting database of models

that are viable for agriculture around the world. So what we decided to do

was to create a way for people to access those models. So

Agriculture Designer, which is launching very soon, it's right now being tested in

beta. It's been built, at least the version, the beta version of it. It has

2 parts to it. One is a free concept development tool for anyone who

wants to think about an urban farm or urban garden. You can enter in your

budget, you can enter in if you're interested in greenhouse or vertical or soil, you

can enter in how big your team is, you can enter in your location, you

can enter in what crops you're curious about, you can enter in your goal. Do

you want a for-profit farm? Do you want a community-focused farm? And after you enter

that information, for free you're going to get a vision report, which is a report

of your idea on one paper. So you can kind of have like, this is

my idea, and you can share this with people. You're going to get a project

timeline, a typical timeline for a project of your scale and the inputs you gave.

So you can think about what is it going to take from you and who

might you want to join your team to do this. And you're going to get

a list of 3 different farms based on our algorithm that are relevant

to your inputs. And so anyone anywhere will be able to do that for free.

If you want to go further with your idea, let's say you talk to your

friend and you want to be co-founders and you say, you know, we should start

drafting a business plan. You can subscribe and you can become,

you know, we have different subscription levels, but essentially the subscription is going to be

based around a set period of time where you can build an unlimited number of

projects. Because again, we want you to practice that methodology of observing

data and experimenting and finding your right fit. And basically you can build 10-year

economic models. So you can access our database by

inputting again more details about your market, specific pricing for your

products that you do. We're going to encourage you to do market research. And go

through our methodology online, independent of a consultant. And

what you're going to get in the end is what's your payback, what's your yield,

what's your overall CapEx, how much of your OpEx is going towards

seeds, for example. And you're going to really know what it's going to take from

you to develop that business. And we're going to invite you to keep going and

build unlimited projects until you get to your best version. And that's going to hopefully

make you better prepared for 2 things. One, going out on your own and building

your farm. Or 2, if you do want to talk to us, you're going to

be better prepared and you'll be able to have a lower-cost engagement with us because

you've already done your homework. So we're allowing you to do that homework in a

very low-cost way. In addition to that thing, we've also created

classes. So we've taken our commercial urban farming classes and put them online. So you're

not just on your own experimenting with this. We're going to teach you the different

types of urban farms. We're going to teach you the main technologies that will make

or break your business. We're going to teach you how do you do market research

and how do you think about finding your customer. We're gonna teach you about

aquaponics and organic certification. So, all of that is gonna be online, and

combined, I think that's really gonna democratize some of the basic knowledge.

And again, talking about those complex questions, I think it's gonna elevate the

discussion globally to get us to a more sophisticated level of discussion about

vertical farming and greenhouses. That sounds amazing, and I'm excited about the

beta as well, because I've been thinking about this idea for something in New Orleans.

My brother lives there, and I've been kind of like getting his feedback on

the the market there. He actually works in food distribution. So yeah, when you talk

about the last mile, like, like, that's part of the challenges, I'm sure. Like, it's

great, you know, you have the planning, you're gonna, you have to make it, you

know how you're gonna harvest it and the model you're gonna use. But and then

you have to actually like make the connections to like the rest if you're doing

a smaller, like the restaurants and the chefs. And, you know, I wonder, would the

courses cover some of that from a marketing perspective? Or is that something that, you

know, that's a bit more challenging? Totally. So, so the way the courses are broken

out is we kind of talk about specific models. So for example, if you're looking

to do a farm one style model, which is like a boutique, you know, chef

garden farm, we talk to you about what you should expect from your sales perspective.

You know, like, you're going to be spending a lot of time just talking to

chefs and building a cool brand and doing collaborations. And if you're

excited about that, go for that model, right? Or create your own version of that,

of that idea. If you are really excited about, you know, signing

2-year deals with Kroger to buy your product at, you know, a million pounds a

year, okay, you need to go towards the big warehouse vertical farming model. If you're

excited about having customers come to you and have an experience and

buy products on site and do a market, that's another option. So

we're never going to tell people this is— I mean, if we're consulting

you and we get to the conclusion, we'll tell you. We're never going to tell

people like, this is what you should do right away. Instead, we want to arm

people with the tools and the methods to help them make their own

conclusion, because that's what's going to make them really good entrepreneurs. They have to really

be excited about their decision and excited about the work they're going to do on

a day-to-day basis. And a big part of that is the marketing. So I'm so

glad you're excited about it because I am so excited about this

product. I'm, you know, I'm on the edge of my seat to get it out

there and share with people. Yeah, if there's a beta or something, I'd love to

be able to test it because it's just— I'm a bit of a systems,

like, kind of nerd and just like geeking out on systems and I love stats

and I used to manage like a customer service reporting team back in the day.

So I love like spreadsheets. Let's put it that way. Yeah, well,

we're working through some bugs. It's being tested by beta users right now.

If you look, if you shoot me an email and And we'll see what we

can do. But if anybody here is interested in the product, it's called Agriculture

Designer. You can learn about it a bit more at agriculture.com/designer,

and you can actually sign up to be notified once it goes public or as

we release more beta users. So, take a look, and we'd love to

see what you think. Yeah, we'll make sure we get all those links in the

show notes. One thing that's interesting, because I'm Latino, I was born in El Salvador,

so this idea of minority-owned businesses, entrepreneurial culture, building

up that And you sort of touched on it a little bit in your episode

with Maurice, and you mentioned how you were in one of these sessions and you

were in like a community forum. Can you talk a little bit about what happened?

Because I don't want to spoil it. I'd rather have you tell it because I

thought it was fascinating and your reaction to it. Yeah, I'm happy

to. It's a bit, it's a bit sensitive, so I want to talk about it

in the right way. I'm a white man. I grew up in an upper middle

class family, so I have a lot of privilege. And I think growing

up internationally, I was pretty unaware of race

issues because I grew up in international schools where I had people from

all over the world that were both my teachers and my fellow colleagues. With that

said, I probably didn't interact with other wealth categories and

didn't get the connection between race and wealth gaps. Now, when

you are working in urban agriculture, you have to understand that there,

as Karen Washington says and calls it, credit to her, there's a

food apartheid. There have been decisions made to

elevate certain populations and exclude other populations, and

food is one of the many representations of that kind of

apartheid, of that division. So even the

idea of a food desert as a name from USDA is considered by many as

very disrespectful and almost racist because

it's talking about these places that are deserts, even though

a lot of people who are making that definition were part of the problem. So

when I come in and I'm a white male and I'm like,

asked by the city of Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Borough President's Office asked me

to compile a list of individuals to invite and to have a roundtable

about the future of urban agriculture and resiliency. And I was honored

by that. It was, it was 5 years ago, so it was pretty early on.

And I sent invitations out to women and men and the people

I had known. Others were invited too. So, you know, we had pretty good

representation at that meeting, but there's always people that are excluded and some of those

people are on the ground. They don't have time. They don't have the financial

means to maybe get places. Maybe they don't have the same abilities with technology

to respond to certain invitations. So some people are excluded. And so

I kind of became a representative of this group in some ways and was leading

it and answering questions for it. And in that sense, I was put in a

position to think about the future of urban agriculture in New York City,

but I don't represent a lot of the populations that need that. And so

As I was speaking at some of these events, in one particular one,

several people of color were extremely aggressive to me

about the fact that I was proposing ideas

for their food security and their community's food security. Things like, what

right do you have? Or, you're co-opting urban agriculture, which was a

very community kind of guerrilla grassroots

history to it. I was called a white biotech farmer. You know, to

my face. I'm neither a farmer and I don't work in biotech,

right? So these were difficult things for me. I was interrupted several

times and said, you know, someone said to me, you know, I know I interrupted

you several times, but you know what, I've been interrupted by white men my whole

life, so I'm not going to apologize. So things that were shocking

for me because I didn't grow up in the United States. I sound

American, but I'm not American, so I don't understand a lot of those race issues.

And previously, as I mentioned, I grew up in a very international background and a

privileged background, so I didn't get to experience that. I took a breath and I

let it happen, and I kind of dealt with my

whatever trauma from that afterwards individually, because I don't understand, but I

respect that they're standing up for themselves. I empathize as much as

I can. And the relationship with those individuals has improved since.

There's no problems. And I've learned a lot about how to be more sensitive to

that. But I guess as somebody who's creative and is like, hey, let's solve this

problem and let's do this, I mean, I can be very naive about trying to

solve communities' problems that don't want my help or don't,

you know, there's a lot of trust that needs to be built to do that,

even if I have a lot to offer. And that was— that's really hard for

me because I just want to solve the problems and I have a lot to

offer. So we kind of changed the format of leadership there, and

we had women as part of our for-profit agricultural

collective, a group of for-profit farms in New York. That as a woman of

color and a CEO, so she stepped in for me. So I wasn't able to

be part of that process anymore simply because of my sex and the color of

my skin. I mean, I was literally removed because of that. So,

so that was difficult for me, and I wanted to get Maurice's advice on that.

And I think his advice on that podcast was really good and open. And, and

again, if I've said anything to offend anyone or be offensive, I, I

do apologize. I'm, I'm just communicating my experience and

And that I'm trying to do the best for my communities. Yeah, I think it's

an important discussion to have because, to your point, the optics on even something

like agtech, like when you see conferences and you see speakers and

you're like, whoa, that's a very white male panel

of folks. Are those the only people doing interesting things in this space? So I

think having these conversations early on, and when you were talking about

the access to the blueprint and people getting started with how they want to grow

their farms, Even maybe ideas about partnering with, you know, because you can be a

minority-owned business and grants and that sort of stuff. And I wonder if there's some

opportunities to kind of position this as something that, you know, minority

business owners can look at as an opportunity that they can delve further into.

Oh, definitely. I mean, RFPs are coming from cities. The city of Philadelphia had an

RFP for their local food system plan. We gathered, you know, we

have female advisors and female team members, and we also found

local people of color and females to join our team for

that. But I still think we lost that in part

because they had a local, more diverse team than us.

Okay, great. And I love those initiatives. And I think that that's great.

And I support that fully. We don't do enough

to encourage diversity. And we still don't have enough diversity. If you look at the

news that's happening with the Oscars right now, you know, and agtech is

especially especially bad at this. But look, Agritecture does a lot of

work to try and change that in our own way. We've created women in

agtech panels, we've created women in agtech roundtables, we

have diversity goals for our company. I, as a keynote speaker,

when I get invited to panels that's only men on it, I say, I will

not be on a man-all. You need to find a woman or replace me with

a woman. So those are the things that we need to do, and I'm certainly

not perfect. But I think, to your point, look, I want a lot more people

in urban ag, and there's a lot of problems to solve. If you're a woman

or minority-owned business or potentially can be that, try to find a specific gap in

your community, your region, or with your expertise. You can build a business around

that because there are opportunities for you, as

there should be. You mentioned some of the events that you're doing with Agritecture.

We'll use that as a segue to the— you

run an event, a week-long event in New York City as well, right? Yeah, so

Agritecture both produces events and creates programming for

events. And is a media partner for some events. You can find all of the

events on our events page, agritecture.com/events. And what

we do is we— the week-long event you're referring to is NYC AgTech

Week, which we do with other members of the NYC Ag Collective. And

that's like an anti-conference. We basically said, let's not have a single location,

let's not rent out a space, let's just use our community to

showcase what's possible. So we kind of go all over the city. The

first year was crazy ambitious that we did it, We did all 5

boroughs. We had farm tours in all 5 boroughs, and it was 6 days.

And yeah, it was so exciting because people get to like really

interact with the farmers and really, you know, we did like tech demos and we

did policy panels. So it's really, really fun. And, and we've been doing that, um,

ever since. I think we're doing our 5th year probably in September.

So, but that's not just agriculture anymore. We have a lot of people that, that

work together on it that, that's really exciting. And if you want to keep up

to date with that, you can go to farming.nyc and see the collective's website.

We are going to Abu Dhabi in March to do the biggest agtech event in

the region, Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture. We're looking for sponsors

for that to join us to do a special program there. We are doing our

really big event. Well, I guess I'll say a couple more. I'm doing a mega

trends panel at Indoor AgCon in May, which is going to be really kind of

bringing in big companies, but I can't mention who they are yet, to talk about

how they're looking at this. So non-ag companies looking at indoor ag. So I'm excited

about that. I'm going to be at Greentech, biggest horticultural fair in

the world, in Amsterdam, working on the programming for their vertical farming

pavilion. And then September is NYC AgTech Week. And then

December is— we're just about to announce it— is the Agriculture

Exchange, which is an event that we're producing in Toronto, December

1st and 2nd, 2 days, 6 thematic areas across

agtech, really amazing pavilions and thematic focus areas.

Really, really exciting event that I am stoked to see you at. Yeah, I'm gonna

try to make it to New York in September. I was talking to Louise about

it. So yeah, yeah, we'll, we'll broadcast live some sessions there.

So I mean, it sounds like you've got your finger on the pulse of everything

that's happening. As you know, as part of the research for this podcast, I've been

collecting— I've got an Airtable full of like a ton of conferences

and speakers and companies. But yeah, I mean, just in looking at the conferences, there's

There's so many happening, and there's a lot of interest in the space, it seems,

all across the country as well, because you just described, I think, like events in

like 2 or 3 different countries alone. So, as we

wrap up, what would you say has got you— you know, because you've got your

finger on the pulse with what's happening, with what companies are developing, and even some

stuff that you probably can't talk about, but I'm wondering what has you excited when

you think about, you know, talk a little bit about vertical farming, but you can

talk about the general agtech space as well, when you think about the next 12

months. Yeah, what am I excited about in 2020 for agtech?

There's some big companies that have been around for a while,

like Preva, which is a really great company. They've been doing a lot of

research and announcing some new technologies and solutions,

both software and hardware, for the space. I'm very excited to see those announcements

coming soon. And they also have launched a new foundation called the

Sustainable Urban Delta Foundation that kind of really thinks about cities as Productive

Landscapes, that I'll be in a documentary with them that's coming out this, this year,

and it's gonna be really, really exciting to see that. And, and I'm really excited

to see what comes from them. I think I'm really mostly excited about automated racking

systems in 2020 as it comes to vertical farming. We've seen a lot of

advancements in that area, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. But I

think the companies are getting really smart in finding partners who have established

automation solutions to bring them in, as opposed to building everything in-house. And

so I'm really excited as we move from no automation to

semi-automated. You know, I don't think we're going to get to automated yet, even though

a lot of them are marketing that, but we're moving towards semi-automated more

consistently. So I'm excited to see the difference that's going to make once the

operations are running and some of those metrics to see, you know, how is it

worth the CapEx in scenarios? Sometimes when we're

modeling them, sometimes it's worth it and sometimes it's not. So all that

CapEx is an additional risk. used to sell more lettuce. So I'm curious to see

if that happens, because that's always been like the future of this. So I think

2020, we'll see some advancements in that area. I'm excited about the genetic research piece.

I don't think there's gonna be that much advancement. I think we're still looking at

a 5-year trajectory for a lot of that genetics and breeding research to be applied

to the market specifically, but I'm looking forward to seeing more of

that. I think food safety is really exciting. We've had a lot of food safety

scares in Australia, Europe, more Australia and the

US, certainly in other parts of the world too, but in the US it's

been, it's been really prevalent around leafy greens. And so I'm really excited to see

how food safety policies change and the new Food

Safety Coalition, which is run by a couple different big vertical

farming and greenhouse companies. And it's really cool to see them collaborate on something like

food safety that's so important to consumers and to the industry. So I'm really

excited to see that kind of change things and maybe drive more people indoors.

And I guess the last category is policy. Like, you know, we have the

3rd urban agriculture director in the United States that was just put into place

in D.C. to join Atlanta and Philadelphia. That's really exciting.

You know, we have the Minister of Food Security in the UAE that's really going

to be launching a bunch of things in the coming year in the UAE. We've

got policy really advancing as well in Singapore in the space. You

know, Australia now is going to have to think about these things. New Zealand is

thinking about these things a bit more. So, I'm really excited to see how policy

accelerates the industry and starts to structure it a little bit, because

it can really formulate a policy decision like the one we referred to in

Brussels, really formed the kind of farms we saw. So, I'm excited to see how

those different policies will actually drive the kind of integrations that we see.

And, of course, I'm excited about the launch of Agriculture Designer in 2020. Hell yes.

Sounds like a lot of stuff to be excited about, and it feels like

you're at— I mean, your company's at the next of what's happening because

you're touching and you're engaging with so many different folks in the space. So

it's almost in the catbird seat in terms of seeing what's possible and seeing

what's coming in. So it seems like just really exciting times to be in the

space. And I think when you think about the development that can happen, I think

some of it is we can't even imagine the things that people will develop

in this sort of agtech space and new companies that'll arise

to meet needs. I talked a little bit with Louisa about the idea of

modular is companies moving towards modular. So companies like Soft Robotics,

making the grippers for the ripe fruit, and companies

like Intelligent Growth Solutions, right? And I guess that's something you're seeing as

well in your analysis. When people want to put something together, it's probably better

to think modular because the innovation is happening so fast. Oh yeah. I mean,

there's a whole podcast about that, but it saves on some of that embodied energy

if you can do prefab and modular solutions, which I like. And then actually, you

can also compartmentalize and solve certain problems, HVAC

challenges, reduce certain costs in that way. And bottom line, you

know, we did a global census around controlled environment agriculture with

Autogrow, our partner for this year or last year, and

41% of the, of the farmers in CA are new. So if

you're a new farmer, you know, you're not going to be building your own turnkey

solutions every time. You need some turnkey, modular, easily shippable

solutions, and, and the market needs that. And we're going to be seeing more of

those coming All right, that's probably a good place to put a pin in

there for now, but that's a lot of great information happening, so it's really exciting.

I'm sure I could probably geek out for another— we'll save that for a future

podcast episode. So where's the best place for folks to track you down and

connect with you online? Yeah, I definitely want you to check out agriculture.com.

We've got research articles on there, we've got podcasts, we've got

videos, we've got blogs for 7 years I think are on there in the

archive already. You know, our newsletter is a really, really good resource as well to

know about the events and what's happening. So just dig through Agritecture. Let me

know what you like about it, what you don't, what you'd like to see. I'm

always looking to talk to our audience and anyone curious about this space. You

can connect with me on LinkedIn, just search Henry Gordon-Smith, or you can connect with

me directly on social media by looking for The Agritech

on Instagram and Twitter. And Henry is active on social, I can vouch for

that. Thanks so much for this podcast. I really appreciate you

inviting me on. I love to see a vertical farming-focused podcast like this. And, and

really great questions. So I really appreciate it. I appreciate you taking the time for

joining me on the show. Thanks again to Henry for sharing his journey

of the founding of AgriTechture and how he and

his company have come to play an important role in helping

me and others understand the agtech industry. It's clear from

the conversation and from Henry's social posts that it's a

topic that he's really passionate about. I'm excited next week for

a conversation with John Friedman. He is the Chief Operating

Officer of Freight Farms. It was one of the companies that I was looking

forward to learning more about, and John did not

disappoint with his interview. So stay tuned for that. That's going to be episode 5.

Thanks for listening. To hear all past episodes and read the episode

summaries, which includes any links mentioned in the episode, as well as

the full show transcripts, Visit

verticalfarmingpodcast.com. There you can sign up for our

email list to be notified when new episodes are published.

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